Great Cultural Revolution's Role in Bad Kung Fu

A tiny history lesson is neccessary to understand the dilution and misinterpretation of kung fu. When the Great Cultural revolution occurred in China Mao Zi Dong tried to bring all the people to the same level which meant that rich, successful and educated people had to be removed from the equation. At this time most of the doctors, lawyers, entertainers, teachers and martial artist were killed off if they couldn't escape. This ensured that no one would be able to oppose Mao during this new regime change. Unfortunately this meant that all the martial artist teachers at this time were killed or they had to flee. Many of the traditional arts fled to Taiwan, Hong Kong or other areas in China and taught in secret. Martial artists have always been looked at as a strange group of individuals even in China. It wasn't until Bruce Lee took the world by storm and showed a more beautiful part of the arts that China began to support kung fu as a tradional part of Chinese culture. When Bruce Lee passed away China began to promote martial arts far and wide around the region. The only problem being that while they had much of the information, most of the teachers had already been killed. For this reason many of the "new kung fu" styles had been arranged to look beautiful but not all of the teachers understood the movements.

Most all of the martial arts have been derived from China at one time or another. However, the styles that had branched off of the more traditional or real fighting systems in China have proven to be far more effective than the new arts. For example Muay Thai has been more effective than some of the kung fu fighters in recent days. This is all due to the lineage of many kung fu systems being diluted or incomplete. In addition there are many teachers that love to hustle foreigners into believing they are learning "real" kung fu while teaching techniques that are not effective or haven't with stood the test of actual combat.

So today it is very important to sift out the best lineages of kung fu and preserve them for future generations. Wing Chun has proven to be one of the more effective styles because of the attention that Bruce Lee brought to the fighting system helping it to develop and expand in real combat scenarios. Think about kung fu as technology such as the airplane. Just a little over a hundred years ago the first plane was made but it only flew about 100 yards. Due to all the researchers that followed in helping its development every country in the world has airports with the ability to fly back and forth. All of the movements we have learned in martial arts are like parts of a plane. Wings, motors, wheels, etc. If we do not put the pieces of the plane together, then we are left with a mess of equipment without a real functioning purpose.